Google’s PC Market Share Off Its Peak, Yet Company Seeing More Searches Than Ever

Combining comScore data and Google statements suggests company is seeing highest search volume of its existence.

Yesterday, comScore released its September 2015 search engine rankings for the US market. There was almost no change in position or share from August. Google’s share hovers at just below 64 percent.

However, a year ago, Google was at 67.3 percent, and Yahoo was at 10 percent. Today, Yahoo is at 12.6 percent. Google’s intervening losses and Yahoo’s gains are likely a result (at least partly) of the Firefox default search deal with Yahoo.

In terms of desktop search query volume, Google saw a year-over-year increase of 1 percent, to 11.4 billion searches. Bing saw a 2 percent annual increase. Yahoo was flat. However, this doesn’t tell the full story, which needs to include mobile volumes to present a complete picture of the market.

Assuming that the figures immediately above are accurate, we can combine them with Google’s prior statements about mobile search exceeding the desktop to argue that there are at least 11.4 billion mobile queries on Google in the US — or more than 20 billion monthly queries overall. The company also has almost 90 percent of the US mobile search market.

Accordingly, we can say that despite its loss of market share on the PC over the past year, Google is seeing more search queries today — in terms of absolute numbers with the addition of mobile queries — than at any time in the past.

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.